


As Far as These Songs Will Take Me

by partyghost (Arokel)



Series: Say What I Want [4]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Julie Molina, Bisexual Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Luke comes to terms with his own sexuality very gradually, Luke-centric, M/M, Pansexual Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms), Platonic Kissing, Queerplatonic Relationships, Songfic, Sort of? - Freeform, With some help from his friends, just trust me, kind of a character study? but told through kissing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28766670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/partyghost
Summary: Luke Patterson kisses his friends and writes songs for the people he loves. It's not complicated.(What do you call an AU of your own AU?)
Relationships: Alex Mercer & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Alex Mercer/Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson, Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms)
Series: Say What I Want [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040685
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	As Far as These Songs Will Take Me

**Author's Note:**

> partly because you guys said you wanted to hear the coming-out song and partly because I'm mired in a ton of shitty queer rep in real life and just wanted to write something nice
> 
> so yeah this is kind of nominally set in the same world as everything else in this series but you can also treat it like an au, whatever works

If there’s one thing aside from music that defines Luke Patterson, it’s that he loves his friends. He doesn’t have a ton of them, but when he does click, he clicks _hard_. A friendship with Luke Patterson is a friendship for life.

Bobby, because he’s an asshole loser and doesn’t know how to just _ask_ for space without making you feel like shit about it, say it’s not very punk-rock to make your whole personality about _having friends_. Alex says friendship is the most punk-rock thing out there.

Luke agrees with Alex. And besides, his friendships aren’t his _whole personality_ ; it’s not like he’s changing himself for anyone else’s sake – if he cared about who other people wanted him to be, he wouldn’t be in a rock band. It’s just that he loves fiercely and intentionally, and he is happiest when the people he loves are happy.

Making people happy comes easily to Luke, most of the time. Friendship is uncomplicated. Unconditional. It’s an easy refuge when the rest of his life is too much to deal with. Things with his mom never seem to go right and everything he does only makes her sadder, so Luke swallows the sting of being a bad son and focuses all his energy on being a good friend to boys with bad parents – being the _best_ friend.

Part of being that best friend is _knowing_ things. That’s always been Luke’s problem with family; it’s so _hard_ to know what his parents want him to say or do or be, and time and again Luke buckles under the weight of that uncertainty. But he has made a study of his friends, knows them better almost even than he knows himself. A best friend is the kind of friend who anticipates what you need before you know you need it.

An unintended consequence of Luke’s quest to be the best friend Bobby, Reggie and Alex will ever have is that he now has _incredible_ gaydar. It would be impressive even if he _was_ gay, and since he’s only developed it in solidarity with his terminally-clueless closeted best friend he thinks he deserves some sort of award for how good he is at knowing when other people are. He knows that the guy in Alex’s physics class who Alex won’t admit he’s crushing on is straight, for instance. And he knew Alex was into guys at least like, two months before Alex did.

He knew Alex was into _him_ before Alex knew it, too. And it was weird, for a second, but he’d had a solid two years of watching Alex be un-subtly into Reggie and Bobby, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t prepared for it. Honestly, the hardest part of the whole thing was pretending to believe it when Alex insisted he’d never had any gay thoughts about any of them, no sir, definitely not.

And he’s not… he doesn’t _mind_ it, alright? He didn’t mind, for the whole year when Alex looked at him like he was the coolest person in the entire world. He thought about saying something a couple times, like, ‘hey, dude, you know I’m cool with it, but you gotta tone it down where people could see,’ but he was afraid Alex might stop completely if he did. And it wasn’t that he _wanted_ Alex to be into him, or that he was into Alex back, it was just… nice, to have someone look at him like that. Alex and Reggie and Bobby are Luke’s entire world, and it was nice to feel like he was Alex’s, for just a little while.

Luke loves his friends more than anything else in his life. If Alex had ever said, at any point, hey, I’m having a really hard time right now and I feel really alone and I just want to kiss you and I feel bad about that, Luke probably would have said sure, go for it, if it’ll make you feel better.

And like – okay, totally, completely honestly – he doesn’t think he would mind that, either. Kissing is nice. And obviously Luke doesn’t want to kiss guys, not like Alex does, he just… doesn’t not want to. He knows that as a straight guy he’s supposed to be like, horrified or disgusted by it, but ever since he figured out Alex’s deal and had to think about what that meant for him, he’s kind of thought of it as something not really worth the trouble of looking into. He’s never looked at a boy and thought _wow, I want to kiss him_ , so it’s never really been an issue.

But now that Alex is officially, definitively out, he barely looks at any of them. And Luke minds that a _lot._

He doesn’t know what to do about it.

* * *

Alex is looking at the pizza box again.

He does it a lot, when he thinks none of them can see. He plays darts, or does homework, or holds conversations, but his eyes are always canted just a little bit towards that stupid set of rules tacked to the wall. Someone should just tear it down, Luke thinks.

It was just supposed to be a dumb bet; it’s not like any of them were going to follow the rules anyway. Luke wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place if he’d known it was going to bother Alex so much. It hurts, too, to know that it’s probably been bothering Alex ever since they made it and he’s just never been able to say anything about it – and that even though now he _can_ say something, he still doesn’t.

He’s tried to put himself in Alex’s shoes, but he can’t imagine it. There’s never been a moment, since Luke first met Alex and Reggie, that he’s felt _alone._ Even when things with his parents are rough, he’s always had them. He can’t imagine not knowing that.

So he tries his best to be there for Alex, in small ways, ways that Alex won’t notice so he can’t brush them off like he does big things. Big things didn’t work. He offered Alex a big gesture once and Alex turned him down, so Luke took the hint and is now operating in stealth-friendship-mode. Alex is a skittish horse, and Luke is a thirteen-year-old girl with a tragic backstory and magical horse-friendship powers. Slowly, he will get Alex to trust him again.

It’s a mixed metaphor.

“Be honest,” Luke says, coming to stand behind Alex. Ordinarily he might make a fuss about the fact that Alex is sitting in _his_ shitty camp chair, but right now it just means that Alex’s head is at the perfect height to place his folded arms so he can rest his chin on them and stare at the pizza box, too. “It was me, wasn’t it?”

Alex’s posture slumps just a bit on a sigh, but he doesn’t shake Luke off. Victory. “What was you?”

“Why you came out. You were just so overwhelmed with lust for me that you couldn’t keep it in any longer.”

Alex does shrug him off, then, and doesn’t complain when Luke’s elbow lands directly between his shoulder and collarbone. Luke can never tell if this new brand of not-homophobic jokes is working or not, but he’s got a few years of homophobic jokes to make up for, so he’s going to keep making them until Alex tells him to stop.

“That was it, yeah. You caught me.”

Luke accepts the brush-off and flops onto the couch across from Alex, kicking his feet up on the coffee table in a nonchalant, look-how-harmless-I-am slouch. “So what’s it like?”

“Being gay?” Alex says, eyebrows raised in frank skepticism.

Luke rolls his eyes. He’s not _that_ insensitive, to just ask that sort of question point-blank. “Being out. To us.”

Alex considers: rolls his neck, bites his lip, crosses his arms. The usual tells. And yet after all that, all he says is, “it’s… better. It’s better.”

And yeah, _duh._ Luke knows that, just like he knows exactly when Alex realized he was gay in the first place and exactly when he decided that was an okay thing to be. Luke _knows_ Alex, and he knows that there’s still something _wrong_ between them. It’s not a crush; Alex got over that six months ago. But there’s something bothering Alex, and it’s something he doesn’t feel like he can share.

“Anything else you wanna get off your chest? A secret crush on Reggie? He’d be thrilled,” Luke says, lilting, teasing, arms behind his head like he doesn’t care at all. Which he doesn’t, or he wouldn’t, except that if Alex _did_ have a crush on Reggie it would mean that Luke missed it, and Luke doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on with his friends.

But it’s just a joke. Mostly.

It works; Alex laughs. “No, definitely not Reggie.”

Luke heaves himself forward, landing with his elbows on his knees to fix Alex with a haughty, dismissive look. “Boring,” he says, and Alex makes a little indignant noise. “What use is being into dudes if you’re not even going to _be_ into any of them?”

“There are people in this world beyond the four of us, you know,” Alex says, rolling his eyes, but there’s a fondness in his voice that Luke tells himself is because Alex’s world _is_ just the four of them. Just like Luke’s is.

“Yeah, but do they matter?” Alex glares, and Luke relents. No more teasing, fine. He sighs, slouching even further until he’s looking sideways at Alex, neck twisted awkwardly and head pressed up against the back of the couch. “Alright, fine. Is there anyone out there in the boring masses you’ve got your eye on?”

He knows there is. Why else would Alex spend so much of his time staring at that pizza box like it’s personally wronged him? Why else stress about the possibility of losing his virginity, if there isn’t anyone he’d want to lose it with?

Alex moves off the camp chair to sit gingerly beside Luke, which is probably more so he can stare straight ahead and hope Luke can’t see his blush than because he’s actually comfortable with this line of conversation. “There’s, uh – there’s a guy in physics with me, I guess, but I can’t really tell – “

“What’s his name?”

“Uh, Teddy? He does debate, I think.”

Luke knows him, too. And he knows, for a fact, that Teddy is not only into girls, but is currently dating one.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Alex says, kind of rueful, at the look on Luke’s face. “It’s no big deal; I didn’t really think he was – it’s just that he’s really… he touches me a lot.”

Luke wants to say that from what he’s seen of Teddy in other classes, the guy is a jerk who’s probably touching Alex because he thinks it’s fun to mess with the gay kid’s head, but that’s not going to make Alex feel any better. So he just says, “oh, so _he’s_ allowed to touch you.”

It should sound like a joke, but it accidentally sort of doesn’t.

“It’s not like I said you couldn’t,” Alex mutters, but his body language, stiff and radiating so much discomfort that it makes _Luke_ uncomfortable, says it for him.

And Luke knows, knows, _knows_ that it’s because Alex is afraid if he touches them they’ll think he’s coming onto them, and he _also_ knows that Alex would rather suffer by himself than listen to anyone tell him that’s not true.

It pisses him the hell off.

Because Luke _misses_ touching Alex. Alex is taller than he is, and broad and warm and he kind of smells nice all the time, and Luke’s never figured out if that’s shampoo or deodorant or what, but he’s smelled that way ever since they were kids so it might be just Alex. Alex used to give the best bear hugs, back when they were nine and didn’t know you weren’t supposed to hug your male friends, or when they were twelve and _did_ know but didn’t care.

So Luke drops one leg from the coffee table and knocks his knee against Alex’s, and Alex doesn’t move away.

“It’s just,” he says, slumping a little but still keeping a careful few inches between his thigh and Luke’s, “it would be nice to find _someone._ Not even to sleep with, just… someone who gets it.”

“But you do know people who get it,” Luke says, kind of perplexed. Alex hasn’t said a _lot_ about the places he goes to without the rest of them, but it doesn’t take a genius to know there are gay guys there.

Alex glares at him and kicks him in the ankle. “You weren’t supposed to know about that. Those guys… I’m just like a stupid kid to them. Like, they care, and they want to, you know, help, but… none of the guys who want to do anything with me are the kind of people _I’d_ want to do anything with.”

That’s kind of a relief to hear. Not that Luke would have been mad at Alex if he was out hooking up with gay guys in clubs or anything like that, but he would have felt… abandoned, kind of. Like Sunset Curve wasn’t enough for Alex. Like _Luke_ wasn’t enough for Alex. And that’s stupid, because obviously if Alex is looking for people to hook up with he’s not going to be looking at his straight best friends, but – it’s just nice to know that he’s not keeping _that_ part of his life from them, too.

Luke shrugs, and if his arm nudges Alex’s hip in the process, well, that’s an accident. “Then you wait for someone you do.”

“Yeah, but when _is_ that?” _There_ is the frustration that keeps Alex staring down that pizza box for hours, the catch in his voice that betrays how much he hates waiting for something that he thinks the rest of them have already found.

“I don’t know, dude, but I wouldn’t stress about it. You’re, you know, I mean – “ Luke says, helpless. Not _hot._ That’s not a thing Luke can say, even if it’s maybe objectively true. Or subjectively true? If _Luke_ can see it, surely other people can. But straight guys don’t tell their gay friends they’re hot, even if it _is_ objective. You just don’t do that. It would probably make Alex feel worse. “You’re a catch, or whatever.”

Alex grimaces, which means Luke’s slip was more obvious than he wishes it was. “I just want to – be a teenager, and make out with people, and – it just sucks,” Alex says, voice tight in that panicky, trapped way he gets sometimes, when he thinks there’s nothing anyone can do to help him, or doesn’t expect anyone to try.

Which is why Luke hears himself say, as if from very far away, “you could make out with me.”

Alex stops dead.

Best-case scenario, Luke thinks, he’ll laugh. It’s really for the best if no one takes what he just said seriously, even if he’s now realizing he kind of meant it seriously. No need to put Alex through that when he only got over his crush on Luke like, six months ago.

The scenario he _expects_ is for Alex to go all embarrassed and awkward, because again, six months. And because Alex has made it clear over the past few weeks that he doesn’t and will never look at any of them like that, with a kind of desperation that Luke isn’t stupid or callous enough to joke about.

What _actually_ happens is that Alex goes beet red, grits his teeth, and hisses, “not cool.”

“Sorry, dude,” Luke says, sitting bolt upright and holding his hands out placatingly in an attempt to smooth over the emotional minefield he’s just stumbled onto. His elbow knocks into Alex’s shoulder on the way up and he fights the urge to apologize for _that,_ too. “I was just –“

“Making fun of me. Thanks, Luke. That’s really what I was looking forward to, when I came out,” Alex says. It’s got a caustic edge to it, nothing like his usual exasperated jibes. Luke really put his foot in it here.

So, even though it would still be best for everyone involved if they just wrote the thing off as a tasteless joke and waited for Alex to internalize it and never spoke of it again, he says, “I was offering. As a friend, if you wanted.”

Because okay, why not? He hasn’t really thought about it much until now, except for the few weeks when Alex was deep into his crush and kept looking at Luke’s mouth all the time, but the idea isn’t _repulsive._ It just… exists. Luke’s already come to terms with the possibility of Alex wanting to do it and decided it doesn’t bother him, so what’s the problem?

And maybe, maybe if he kisses Alex then Alex will calm the fuck down and stop holding himself so stiff around all of them, or at least around Luke. Maybe then Luke can throw an arm around Alex’s shoulders without worrying he’ll combust with the amount of energy required to claim no-homo where no one was even suggesting there was any homo at all.

The possibility of that is almost worth it all on its own.

Alex stares at him. Studies him. Squints. “You’re fucking with me,” he decides, but he doesn’t sound certain about it.

“I’m not.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Alex insists, his voice going high and panicky again. It’s more panic than Luke saw from him maybe even when he came out, which Luke feels is a bit backwards. Clearly Luke is chill about it now so this should be a way smaller deal, but Alex is _freaking out._ “You’ll hate it, and then you’ll be mad you suggested it, and then you’ll hate _me_ for saying yes –“

Luke doesn’t touch him, because he thinks Alex might jump out of his skin if he does. But he can’t just do _nothing_ while his best friend spirals out about a stupid spur-of-the-moment suggestion, and he can’t think of anything else, so he just ends up weirdly patting the air next to Alex’s arm like he’s a friend’s mom or something. Alex looks unimpressed by Luke’s sudden transformation into a middle-aged woman, which he probably deserves. But he’s doing his best.

“Okay, first of all, if I hate it I’ll just stop,” he says, pivoting to an it’s-fine-bro arm punch to make up for the weird air-patting thing. Alex doesn’t look any less unimpressed. “And you haven’t said yes to anything. It was just an offer; you don’t have to take it. Consider it a favor, if that helps. You’d owe me.”

Not that he’d ever collect on it, because if this happens, which it’s looking like it won’t, it’s probably better for the whole, you know, group dynamic if it’s not common knowledge. Not that Luke is ashamed, just that Bobby would make shitty jokes and that’s the _last_ thing Alex needs. It would complicate things.

Alex scoffs, and Luke doesn’t understand what about that was funny but it does seem to have snapped him out of his overthinking crisis. “Absolutely not. You’d have to do a lot more than pity-kiss me to make up the debt _you_ owe _me.”_

“I owe you? What did you do? And also, it’s not a pity kiss,” Luke says, because _that’s_ important to clear up. Yes, absolutely it is a kiss to cheer Alex _up_ , but that’s because Luke cares about Alex, not because he _pities_ him. Alex has acted like he’s beyond comfort ever since he came out, and Luke is both resourceful and desperate.

Alex rolls his eyes, which seems like it would obviously be about the pity kiss part except that he then says, “only turned guys down on your behalf for three freaking months.”

Luke turns fully sideways, drawing his leg up onto the couch so that he can stare at Alex in outrage. That _never_ happened. Luke has great gaydar; he would have noticed. “ _What?_ People thought I was hot and you didn’t let them tell me? What the hell, man, what kind of wingman are you?”

“Oh my god,” Alex says, kind of reverently, and it takes Luke a second to realize he’s being mocked. “You’re so right, I’m so sorry. I should let you kiss me just to make your ego feel better.”

Luke has kind of lost track of how they got here, because there’s definitely no logical way they could have ended up with _Alex_ mocking _him_ for suggesting they should make out. It’s definitely supposed to be Luke on that end of the argument. Not that it’s really an argument, which is _also_ weird. One or both of them should be more vocally opposed to this. And yeah, he knows he started it, but he’s clearly crazy, and all he really wants to do is make Alex stop looking so sad all the time and just… hug him back.

“It’s not that I _want_ to kiss you,” he says, in an attempt to preserve dignity he’s pretty sure is past preserving.

Alex stares him down. “Then why did you offer?”

“Because – because I don’t know. You were sad.”

“And you thought you would kiss me to cheer me up?” Alex asks, disbelieving. It does sound kind of stupid when he says it like that. But it _is_ what Luke was thinking, so he guesses he has to stand by it even if it’s stupid.

“Yeah? I mean, you said you weren’t into me, so I thought, just as a between-friends thing –“

“Never thought I’d agree with Bobby, but I think you’re taking this punk-rock friendship thing too far,” Alex says, still eyeing Luke suspiciously. But then, to Luke’s shock, he takes a deep breath, turns sideways on the couch, and says, “okay.”

“Okay?” Luke repeats, hating the squeak in his voice.

Now he’s _really_ lost. But he’s pretty sure he just talked Alex into making out with him as a gesture of friendship, so this is probably just a really weird dream brought on by guilt and helplessness, or whatever. If it’s _not_ , it’s something he will deal with in the moment and never, ever discuss with Reggie or Bobby or really anyone after it’s over, including Alex. Talking is complicated.

Alex shrugs, a grin that’s mostly bravado stealing over his face and making Luke’s stomach tighten with what he’s like seventy percent sure is nerves. What the other thirty percent might be is really a tossup. “Okay,” Alex says, more decisively than Luke thinks either of them feels. “Since you _want_ it so bad.”

“ _I’m_ the one who wants it,” he starts, outraged, speaking on autopilot.

It’s the kind of comeback he always gives, but this time it strikes a nerve, because of course it does. Luke should have thought before he spoke; he was just too busy freaking out about the possibility of _kissing his gay best friend_ to consider that say gay best friend is probably even more freaked out.

Alex stops with his hand halfway to Luke’s – shoulders? neck? jaw? Jesus. “You know that's not it, right? Like this is just – I wasn’t expecting you to offer, or anything, and I’m not like, gagging for it –“

His hand twitches nervously, stalled in midair en route to what was probably going to be a very smooth shut-up-and-kiss-me move. Way to ruin the mood, Luke.

Which, speaking of the mood – he just needs –

He just needs to take a second to check in with himself. He’s pretty sure he’s okay with this – has _been_ okay with this since he realized it was a thing Alex might want from him – but he did say it without meaning to and he does feel a little bit like they agreed on it without much further debate. That’s mostly because Luke never backs down from frightening things so long as they seem like a good idea, but still.

It’s not repulsive. It’s just _complicated._ But if Alex isn’t into him anymore, and they’re still just friends, and they never talk about it again afterwards…

If he hates it, he’ll stop.

“Yeah, dude, I know,” he says, grabbing Alex by the wrist and bringing his hand back to – not his lap, because that would be weird, but kind of the space between their knees. “This is just for fun.”

“Fun for you, maybe,” Alex grumbles, but there’s no heat behind it. He lets Luke twist his palm around and twine their fingers together, which is still kind of a weird thing for a friend to do, but it seems to calm him down and they’re probably about to kiss anyway so Luke will live with that weirdness.

“I mean, hopefully for you too, otherwise why are we doing it?”

“Great question; wish there was someone here who could tell me why they proposed it,” Alex drawls, mouth pulling to one side in the ghost of a smile, but his grip tightens on Luke’s hand. He’s nervous.

Luke squeezes back. “This isn’t going to ruin anything. It doesn’t have to be complicated.” He’s partly convincing himself.

That, rather than any of the joking, cajoling things Luke has said so far, seems to sway him. Maybe it’s because Alex is perceptive, too, and he knows Luke values _uncomplicated_ over everything when it comes to his friendships. Luke would never let something _he suggested_ make things hard between them; he’ll power through any weirdness if he has to.

Maybe it’s just the knowledge that Luke really is fine with it, with all of this, that does it. Maybe that would have been enough for Alex even without the demonstration.

But Luke has already proposed the demonstration and he’s not about to take it back, not with Alex leaning towards him, still holding his hand, eyes so intense on his. What’s a kiss between friends?

He thinks he’s about to find out.

"This is okay, right?" he asks, a whisper away from touching, because he's sorted his own feelings out but he just has to _check_ , because Alex still looks spooked and Luke would never forgive himself if he did something Alex didn't want.

"You're fucking insane," Alex tells him. "But yeah, this okay."

Alex's grin catches on Luke's own on the way up.

It’s Luke who takes final leap, in the end, because Alex has never kissed anyone before and Luke has, and because he thinks Alex probably needs that final proof that he’s not taking anything Luke isn’t willing to give him. Their clasped hands lie still in the space between their knees as Luke brings his free hand to Alex’s arm, just resting there, gentle and reassuring. He _feels_ Alex’s eyelashes whisper against his cheek as Alex’s eyes flutter closed, and his heart gives an answering flutter of incredulous, giddy _this is really happening_ nervousness.

It’s really, really happening, he thinks, as Alex pulls back just the tiniest fraction and then brings his mouth back to Luke’s, surer this time. He is really, actually kissing his gay best friend, and it’s – it’s…

The jury’s still out.

He isn’t sure what he expected Alex’s lips to feel like. Rougher, maybe? Men are rougher, right? And Alex bites his lip when he’s thinking through things, so maybe they’d be chapped. But they’re just like anyone else’s, which is kind of terrifying in its own way, and the only real difference is the slight stubble above Alex’s upper lip that Luke can feel scraping lightly over his skin in a way that’s… not awful, which is _also_ terrifying.

“If you hate it,” Alex mumbles, but he doesn’t pull back, and as Luke feels the breath of Alex’s words ghost over his lips, he realizes, _oh. He likes this._

That should be terrifying. But, weirdly, it’s not.

It means it’s _working._

“I don’t hate it.” To illustrate his point, he follows the urge to slide his hand from Alex’s shoulder up to his jaw, sweeping his thumb over the splash of pink across Alex’s cheekbone, and loses his words. “I’m just…”

“Overthinking?”

“Pulling a you.”

Alex ducks his head when he laughs, and in the process turns his cheek towards Luke’s hand. Luke watches him do it, mesmerized by the softness of his skin and the line of his jaw beneath Luke’s palm. “ _So_ charming.”

_You fell for it_ , Luke almost says, but this moment feels too fragile to break by alluding to Alex’s not-so-secret crush on him, and all of a sudden Luke really, really doesn’t want to break it. Because Alex is laughing, and Luke is touching him and he isn’t shying away, and this feels like a step towards fixing all the things that are broken between them because Luke never did anything like this sooner.

“Are you telling me to stop talking?” He waits for Alex’s cheeky grin as much as for his nod, and when it comes, slips his hand from Alex’s jaw around to the nape of his neck, proprietary in a way he really shouldn’t be, considering the fact that they’re just friends kissing for fun. “Cause you know it’s pretty tough to shut me up –“

“I think we’ve proved that’s not true,” Alex says, and then Alex’s mouth is back on his and yeah, that shuts him up pretty well.

Not overthinking is… more or less successful. There are lots of things about kissing Alex that are nice without having to be confusing, or, or thought-provoking or… like how nicely Alex’s nose fits alongside his; that’s kind of weird, right, but not an earth-shattering observation. Or like the way Alex’s thumb rubs back and forth over Luke’s bicep, how his hand is warm through Luke’s hoodie.

And there are things that should be frightening but aren’t, like running his fingers through Alex’s hair and coming up short because he’s never kissed anyone with shaved sides before, or Alex’s sigh against his lips when he does which makes him want to do it again.

The thing that Luke can’t do without thinking about it, though, is follow the promise of that sigh and turn the kiss into anything more than it is. Which is… confusing, is what it is. Confusing, but safe, so long as it doesn’t go any further. If it goes further they have to _talk_ about that, and Luke isn’t great a talking. If they talk, things might get complicated.

He pulls away, and the warmth fades as Alex’s hand falls from his arm.

“Satisfied?”

“Honestly?” Alex says, lips quirked, but the hunted, uncertain look Luke feels clouding his face gives him pause. “You’re not having like, a crisis, are you?”

“No,” Luke lies. “Just wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

Alex quirks his lips. It’s a face Luke has seen thousands of times and never thought anything of, but now, in this context, it looks less teasing and more… seductive? Jesus, what has he gotten himself into? “Kinda more interested in what _you_ want. Seeing as you’re doing me the favor.”

“That’s not how favors work.”

“You’re _sure_ you’re not having a crisis?” Alex asks, pulling even further back, and Luke can _see_ the shutters going down, knows that if he fucks this up now they’ll never come back from it. Alex will never forgive himself if he thinks he’s upset Luke in any way.

So Luke just… won’t let him. If there’s a crisis to be had, and he’s not sure there even is, he’ll have it later, once Alex has had some time to see that there isn’t some other shoe somewhere waiting to drop; things are _fine_ and they’re going to keep being fine.

“Stop worrying,” he says, keeping Alex within reach with the hand still threaded through his hair. “If you want to win that stupid bet you’d better pay attention.” He watches Alex’s eyes go wide as he’s reeled back in, and then Alex’s lips are back on his and Luke is going to do his _damned_ best to just enjoy this.

It’s like it’s finally sunk in to Alex’s brain that he has _permission_ to do this. His hands come to clutch at Luke’s arms with a grip tight enough to read as desperation, but the sweep of his tongue over the seam of Luke’s lips still takes Luke by surprise.

Well, okay. They’re doing that, then.

Alex inhales sharply when Luke opens his mouth in answer, then makes a sound like he’s embarrassed about gasping in the first place. He’s almost like a girl being kissed for the first time, not that Luke would ever make that comparison to him. It’s cute.

But he picks things up quicker than any girl Luke’s ever kissed, and what’s – worse? better? absolutely, mind-bendingly weird? – he _knows_ Luke, knows the ways Luke likes to be touched normally, and he’s intuitive enough to apply that here.

What Luke really likes, what he wanted to begin with and the reason he even followed through on this, is being held. He likes Alex’s strong hands cupping his cheeks, he likes Alex’s knee drawn up on the couch pressing Luke back into the cushions, he likes how solid, how warm Alex is everywhere Luke can feel him.

Fuck.

The kiss ends anticlimactically, in that Luke shifts forward, hoping Alex might hold him closer if they’re closer together to begin with, but instead Alex hisses, winces, and pulls away. For a second, Luke worries that he’s _really_ ruined things; that he’s taken this too seriously and crossed a line that Alex isn’t comfortable with. Which would be a real bummer, since Luke’s just discovered that _he’s_ a lot more comfortable with a lot more than he might have thought, and that seems a lot more worth exploring than it used to.

But then Alex is massaging his ankle and gritting out a, “foot’s asleep,” and Luke remembers, oh right. They’re friends. Alex is not there for him to experiment with; Alex is there to be reassured and then everything is supposed to go back to normal. Luke _promised_ him it wouldn’t be complicated.

He tries to play it cool, like he’s not currently having the crisis he said he wasn’t. “So, got a review for me? Keep in mind it’s a four-star scale.”

Alex blinks, like he wasn’t expecting things to shift gears so quickly. “Like hotels?” He pauses, then, thinking about it, and Luke realizes he’s actually nervous to hear the verdict. “Two point seven five.”

_“Two point seven five?”_ Luke squawks. He’s the first person Alex has kissed, _ever;_ how does he rate so low? Alex just has inflated expectations; Luke’s a great kisser.

Alex shrugs. “You kiss like a straight guy.”

“How would you even _know_ that?”

Alex levels him with an unimpressed look. And yeah, Luke would probably be offended if Alex said he kissed like anything _other_ than a straight guy, but when Alex says it like _that_ it sort of sounds like an insult. Straight guys can kiss other guys just as well as gay guys can. He hopes. Both for his own pride and just because… just because he hopes.

But Luke isn’t the important person here, and his hopes or fears or _whatever_ that kissed dredged up aren’t the important thing. The _important_ thing is that Alex, one of the three most important people in Luke’s world, is laughing at him and promising that once he’s kissed a few more people for comparison he’ll let Luke know.

“You’d better,” Luke tells him, “and when you do I’m prepared to accept your apology for that terrible rating.”

Part of him wants to talk about it. Part of him wants to say, _I’ve never wanted to kiss a guy and I still kind of don’t but I’m really glad you let me kiss you._ But straight guys – or probably gay guys, for that matter – don’t kiss people just out of friendship, and they _definitely_ don’t say “thank you” afterward. The last thing Luke wants to do is the be the complicated one here.

So he pulls back, gives Alex the space he wants – and then thinks better of it, because that was the whole point of this thing, wasn’t it? He’s not about to have gone through all that just to land back in the status quo.

“I’m writing Reggie a song to cheer him up, do you want to hear it?” he says, sinking back into the couch, but he leaves his ankle hooked around Alex’s calf and his wrist balanced on Alex’s knee, and Alex lets him.

“So Reggie gets a song, and _I_ get a weird makeout session?”

Luke grins at him. It’s not weird, it’s not complicated, and Luke will have the crisis he can feel growing to press behind his eyeballs _later_. “I offered you a song and you said no.” So he did this instead.

“I said later.”

“Then I’ll kiss Reggie when I write yours.”

Alex puts on a frown and says, with that snarky, dickheaded humor Luke has _missed_ for the past few months, “I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be an incentive.”

“Just for that, I won’t play it for you,” Luke tells him, but that’s mostly because to play it he’d have to stand up and grab his guitar, and he doesn’t want to do that quite yet.

He doesn’t think that things will change overnight. Alex has spent three years pretending he doesn’t want to be touched, and Luke’s not conceited enough to believe that one kiss will change his mind overnight – and of course Bobby will still probably make shitty jokes and Reggie will make weird ones and Alex will retreat back into his no-homo shell, but this is a start.

And hopefully Alex isn’t going to hold him to his word, because he _will_ write a song for Alex someday, even if he has to wait until they’re old enough that no one’s even listening anymore.


End file.
